Honor did not answer. She drew up her head, and made no further offer of a seat. ’What is your message?’ she asked coldly. But Kate fired up in her sister’s defence, and, tossing her head, said, ’Don’t you suppose, Mrs. Veale, that Honor, or my father, or I, or Joe, or any of us think that a prize has been drawn in your master. Quite the other way—he is in luck. He don’t deserve what he has got, for Honor is a treasure.’ ’What message have you brought?’ asked Honor again. The vindictiveness against the girl seemed to have disappeared from the woman—at least, she did not look at Honor with the same malevolent glance as formerly; and, indeed, she was not now so full of hate against her as anger against Langford—the deadlier passion had obscured the weaker. ’What is the message?’ she repeated. ’Oh, this: You and your father are to come up to Langford as soon as you can. Lawyer Physick be there and waiting.’ Then, with quivering voice and eyelids, and trembling hands thrust through her black cloak, ’I—I be sent wi’ this message. He had the face to send me! Him that I’ve served true, and followed as a hound these fifteen years, turns against me now, and drives me from his door! Look here, Miss Honor Luxmore!’ She held up her long white finger before her face. ’I’ve knowed a man as had a dog, and that dog wi’ ill-treatment went mad, and when the dog were mad she bit her master, and he died.’ She blinked and quivered, and as she quivered the water-drops flew off her cloak over the slate floor, almost as if a poodle had shaken himself. ’Take care!’ she said again, ’take care! The man that kicks at me won’t spare you. Take care, I say again. Be warned against him. I’ve given you his message, but don’t take it. Don’t go to Langford. Let Lawyer Physick go away. The licence has come. Let it go to light a fire. Make no use of it. Stay where you are, and let the master find he’s been made a fool of. Best so! In the hitting of nails you may hammer your knuckles. I’ve served him fifteen years as if I were his slave, and now he bids me pack. "I should have thought of my thatch before I fired my chimney," said the man who was burnt out of house and home.’ ’Go back to Langford, and say that my father and I will be there shortly.’ ’Then take the consequences.’ Mrs. Veale’s eyes for a moment glittered like steel, then disappeared under her winking white lashes. She turned and left the cottage, muttering, ’When the owl hoots look out for sorrow. When the dog bays he smells death, and I am his dog—and, they say, his blinking owl.’ *CHAPTER XXXVI.* *A SETTLEMENT.* Oliver Luxmore entered shortly after Mrs. Veale had left. ’Frize promises the shoes by Monday,’ he said.